High Water

by Richard Baker

My childhood sweetheart and I celebrate our wedding anniversary on August 18 each year, and this year our good friends Jeff Hamilton and Nancy Sullivan threw us a party. Well, okay- they got married, they invited us, and there was a party. Essentially, it was the same thing. And even though the rain that fell made walking to the excursion boat interesting, everyone had a great time.
However, that same rain caused extensive flood damage to several communities on the river, and those people definitely did not have a good time. The rain continued to fall for much of the next week. This created high water all the way down the river. In Dubuque, where we keep our boat, the stage was at 14.5 feet, whereas the previous week, it was around 6.5 feet. When we arrived on Friday night, it was obvious that the water was up. The ramp normally is at about a 20 degree slope, now it was more like 5 degrees. But the really interesting gauge was the twenty foot tall posts that the dock is tethered to. Usually that post is 2 feet below the ceiling; in fact I often thought that if the water got any lower, it would hit the under side of the roof. Now there was a space of 10 feet above the post to the under side of the roof!
The trip to Clinton that we had planned for a year had to happen now, or we weren’t going to have time this year at all, so we decided to go anyway. Jack Stone and his wife Kris on their boat River Gold and us on Just Because, left Dubuque on Saturday, August 25. The first thing we noticed, besides the fact that there was considerable debris blocking our exit from the marina, was that the river was almost deserted. As we headed south to Lock 12, I began to wonder. Were all of the other boaters a bunch of chickens, or was I foolish to be out here now? I decided that if we were careful and kept a good lookout, we were probably safer during high water than low water. With low water, you could hit bottom any time. It was almost impossible now.
Cindy kept a continuous lookout which helped us dodge several hazards, but really, there wasn’t as much junk as you would expect. What happens, among many other things, during high water, is that the water will float dead trees and branches that normally rest on the bank. They are half water logged, so they float mostly submerged. Hitting a deadhead can cause huge damage.
Lock 12 was interesting. The dam was totally open, the first time I’ve ever seen that. It was the fastest lock through we ever experienced, because the water dropped only 6 inches, instead of several feet. South of the lock, we saw a can buoy that was about a quarter mile from where it should be, and another time there were two almost touching each other, literally 2 feet apart. If you have never seen a Mississippi buoy, they are about 10 feet tall, with about 18” showing above the water. We saw many with only inches showing, and one that was bobbing so that it would disappear, and then show up again, depending on the waves. These buoys are connected with a chain to a LARGE piece of concrete, so to move that much weight, the buoy has to be well under water.
We finally made it to our first destination, Savanna, Illinois. We always have fun in Savanna, and in fact a few weeks ago we were talking about the town at a dinner function, and a woman overheard us and said “Are you talking about Savanna, Illinois?" When we assured her we were, she was aghast, saying ”why would you want to live there?” We told here we were not moving there, only visiting, and I think she then thought we were only goofy, instead of goofy and stupid. The fact is, there is a lot to do there, including bicycling in the Mississippi Wild Life Refuge, shopping in one of the larger antique stores I’ve ever seen; and always a crowd favorite, a visit to the Iron Horse Social Club. This is a biker bar with a motorcycle museum inside, and it is cool. Their motto is “Where Intellectual Trash and Bikers Forgather”, and boy, is that ever the truth. If you ever want to see your life flash before your eyes, walk into a biker bar on a Saturday night while you are dressed as a boater. We faced a sea of denim and black leather; they saw four mid-life suburbanites with shorts and boating shoes and watches. But it was okay, the silence didn’t last that long, and we were soon making friends. In fact, as we were sitting at the bar, a passing woman pinched me in the rear, and when I turned around, she pointed to Commander Jack and said “he told me to do it”. Just another example of the locals trying to make the visitors feel at home. She later came up and introduced herself as “Loony Linda”, a now retired former bar owner of a place in town named, you guessed it, Linda’s. I could go on, about a place named McCool’s, whose slogan is “Please Don’t Let Me Drink Alone”; or a place named Poopy’s, whose slogan is- well never mind, this is a family publication.
Our next stop was going to be Clinton, Iowa where we were hoping to see their new marina, but we found out they weren’t done with it yet, so we decided to stay in Savanna two more nights. Darn.
Someday, let me tell you about the boat eating bridge, also in Savanna. Till then, see you on the river.





This article originally appeared in the October 2007 edition of Harbor Lights, a publication of the Madison Sail and Power Squadron. Copyright 2007 Richard Baker